


Cookies (and Other Christmas Sweetness)

by jacksparrow589



Category: Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Christmas Fluff, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Shirbert, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, you get the picture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:54:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28317087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jacksparrow589/pseuds/jacksparrow589
Summary: "The closer you sit, the warmer you'll stay," Gilbert pointed out almost casually. Almost.Anne needed no further encouragement, quickly swiveling to throw her legs across Gilbert's and leaning forward just a bit so he could wind his arm across her back to pull her closer. She wrapped her arms loosely around his neck and rested the top of her head against his cheek. "Thisisbetter," she mused.Gilbert hummed his agreement as he took one last bite of the cookie he'd grabbed before offering the other half of it to Anne, who took it, kissed him on the cheek, and popped it into her mouth.------------Takes place what would be 7 (and a bit) years after the end of AWAE. There is no plot. There is only fluff. You have been promised/warned.(Props to Rozmund for the title)
Relationships: Gilbert Blythe/Anne Shirley
Comments: 18
Kudos: 109





	Cookies (and Other Christmas Sweetness)

**Author's Note:**

> Christmas story time!   
> *cue _Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy_ *   
> In a world where Mary didn't die and Matthew's heart trouble did not continue, our favorite couple, now engaged, manages to steal some alone time before Christmas…  
> *record scratch*  
> *cue the beginning notes of a certain Mariah Carey Christmas song*

Anne checked on the cookies for the third time in two minutes, then took a deep breath. If her plan had worked, it should be bearing out in the next few—

A knock sounded at the door to Green Gables. Anne wiped her hands on her apron and turned to answer it, breaking into a helpless grin. "Hi," she said quietly as Gilbert ducked in, smiling just as widely as Anne was. He shed his jacket, scarf, and hat as Anne shut the door quietly. There wasn't anyone else in the house—Marilla had gone to visit Rachel, and Matthew had gone to Carmody—but Anne couldn't shake the feeling that their plan had been borrowing time from the start, and any wrong move could send it all crashing down.

"Hey… something wrong?" Gilbert placed a hand on Anne's waist, and brought his other to her cheek when she looked up at him.

Anne shivered. "Your hands are cold! And no, nothing's wrong, I'm just, um…" she trailed off.

"Just…?" Gilbert prompted as he leaned in, brushing his thumb across Anne's cheek.

_He has to know this is not going to get me to answer,_ Anne thought. The idea that that was precisely Gilbert's objective followed swiftly on its heels; he was still leaning in. He stopped when his forehead touched Anne's. That, at least, was warm, though the tip of his nose was cold against hers. Anne couldn't say she minded that quite as much, though, as her face was still a little warm from checking on the cookies she'd started before Gilbert had arrived. When Gilbert's lips continued to hover rather than meet Anne's, she found the boldness to whisper, "You're always so eager; what are you waiting for?"

"To warm up just a little. I figured you'd prefer kissing something less resembling an icicle," he explained, his voice only just above a whisper. His lips brushed Anne's. They were definitely still rather cold. She could hear the smirk when he continued, "But if you're really so keen..."

Anne let out a quiet gasp as Gilbert pulled away from her lips in favor of kissing her neck just under her ear. "Gilbert!" She instinctively pushed him away, laughing. "You've made your point!" She went to take the cookies out of the oven.

"I've several more I'd like to make before the afternoon is out," Gilbert told her, reaching around Anne as she reached behind to remove her apron after she set the cookies out.

Anne let him take the ties from her and instead put her hands on his shoulders. "I'm sure you do." She waited for him to lay the apron aside on the table, then pulled him close, sliding one hand up to his cheek to coax him down to her.

While Gilbert certainly didn't need the encouragement, he wasn't unhappy for Anne to give it. One hand went to Anne's waist while the other wove up into the base of the single loose braid Anne wore. (Gilbert no longer needed to ask whether the choice was a purposeful one.) Anne smiled against his mouth and returned the gesture in her own way, toying with the newly-shorn hair at the base of Gilbert's neck, still too short to curl. Anne had appreciated Gilbert's hair a little long, but he'd said the feeling of his hair starting to get under his collar bothered him, and Mary had cut it when he'd arrived four days ago.

Anne wasn't really consciously noticing it. Being able to be this close after three months apart was overwhelming the small details she would remember later. That Gilbert's lips were slightly wind-chapped meant nothing when he was kissing her, and his hands were still cool when they first found her back and her neck, but they warmed as they pulled her closer. His mouth opened against Anne's, and she sighed contentedly. Gilbert never failed to arouse a fluttering feeling inside her, but over the last five years, a core of melted warmth had started settling in her, sometimes glowing softly with a gentle ember heat, and at others smoldering like a fire just on the verge of flashing over.

Mercifully, it was more the former than the latter today. They would be married no matter what, and there had been more than one joke between them about how winding up married sooner than they intended wouldn't be the worst thing, but it was always after the moment had passed, and neither left the other bearing the brunt of the responsibility to stop them. (Of course, this had cut the other way a handful of times, still stopping before anything that would give them an actual reason to move the wedding up, but also creating conversations about comfort and desire and the future of their family.) The few months they had left to wait were both flying by and torturously long, depending on which of the pair you asked and when.

Today, the comfort of knowing that they had another twelve days—and the rather heady five minutes they'd managed to steal for a private hello three days previous—made the process of _very_ slowly easing apart almost bearable.

The other thing that made it bearable was Gilbert moving back to the spot under Anne's ear he'd been paying attention to earlier. Anne gripped the front of his sweater, only then realizing that her hand had slid from his shoulder down to just over his heart. Gilbert covered it with the hand that had been in her hair. It was one of the few times he was readily willing to stop touching her hair, she thought with a soft chuckle.

"What's so funny, hmm?" Gilbert murmured against her neck.

That undid Anne. While she didn't find Gilbert kissing her neck particularly ticklish, they'd found that him speaking against her neck did, and if he went without shaving for long enough, it compounded further. She half-collapsed from laughter, and Gilbert tightened his arms around her to hold her up as he moved away from her neck. Anne trailed into another blissful sigh as she rose up onto her toes for one more soft kiss.

"Still waiting to hear what's so funny," Gilbert reminded her, his lips brushing hers as she eased away.

Should she tell him? Anne decided she should. "Oh, it's just amusing trying to figure out where my hair falls in your priorities when you're kissing me. I'm never entirely sure."

Gilbert's grin brightened mischievously. "Well, I'm happy to help you explore that."

"Your tone says you know any better than I do, but your equivocation tells me you absolutely don't," Anne teased.

Gilbert rolled his eyes and stepped over to the table to pick up a still-warm cookie. "Come on. Let's go sit in front of the fire."

Anne raised an apologetic eyebrow. "The fire I let burn down because I was baking?" She walked over to the small pile of wood to throw on the fire and grabbed two, setting them down gingerly. "Those should catch. In the event they don't, however…" She grabbed a blanket from the chair Marilla read and sewed in most nights and settled it across their laps as she sat between Gilbert and an arm of the couch.

"The closer you sit, the warmer you'll stay," Gilbert pointed out almost casually. Almost.

Anne needed no further encouragement, quickly swiveling to throw her legs across Gilbert's and leaning forward just a bit so he could wind his arm across her back to pull her closer. She wrapped her arms loosely around his neck and rested the top of her head against his cheek. "This _is _better," she mused.__

____

Gilbert hummed his agreement as he took one last bite of the cookie he'd grabbed before offering the other half of it to Anne, who took it, kissed him on the cheek, and popped it into her mouth. As she chewed, she turned to look at the tree before sighing, "I want to light the candles, but Marilla will know."

__

"Somehow, we'll survive until Christmas." Gilbert kissed her temple. "And I will savor every second I can see you looking at the tree on the day. Seeing that light reflected in your eyes… I look forward to it every year. I dream about it sometimes. And I still have regrets about not kissing you in front of that tree all those years ago."

__

"Yes, well, that, we can certainly make up for," Anne told him very seriously, pulling herself closer and kissing Gilbert very soundly. 

__

Gilbert wrapped his arms more securely around Anne. She broke away from his mouth fairly quickly, instead trailing kisses across his cheek and over to his neck, taking her time the same way he had on her. It was an exchange they loved and had perfected as much as they could at this point: giving and receiving pleasure and affection in more or less equal measure. They didn't keep score, of course, but they didn't need to precisely because they were both more than happy to give back what they received.

__

Anne's kisses slowed after a few minutes, and she returned her lips to his for a few more soft kisses. "And for the record," she said as she pulled away, a smile in her low voice even before Gilbert could see it, "I will happily get lost in your eyes, Christmas tree or no."

__

"Yes, I know. Bash has been telling me how much he's going to make fun of us on Christmas. You've officially earned the designation of being as bad as me." Gilbert took Anne's hand and laced his fingers through hers.

__

"What a shame," Anne drawled. "I was going for worse."

__

"Still striving to outdo me? I shouldn't be surprised." Gilbert pulled Anne's hand up to his mouth, pressing a very tender but sound kiss to the back of it, and then a gentler one to the ring he'd given her the year previous. "I think you might want to be careful what you wish for, though I doubt that Bash would say about the way you look at me what he does about the way I look at you; Mary would have his hide. She glared at him when he said as little as he did, though I suppose that might be because Dellie was in the other room."

__

Anne let out a husky laugh. "That bad, hm? I thought you said that Bash doesn't know the half of it."

__

"I said that Bash doesn't know more than what my expression tells him." Gilbert sighed almost dramatically. "The problem lies in my having a very expressive face."

__

Anne casually examined their joined hands, rubbing her thumb along the side of Gilbert's palm. "Yes, well, I doubt that the face you make when thinking of any particular one of the myriad loving things you've expressed the desire to share with me is remarkably different to that of when you're thinking of any of the others."

__

"That…" Gilbert took a measured breath. "Is probably correct. And that's probably all we should say on the subject for the moment."

__

"Fair enough." Anne pulled her arm from around Gilbert's shoulders and swiveled so her legs only partially overlapped his. She rested her head back against his shoulder, smiling as the hand of the arm Gilbert had around her shoulders slowly ran up and down her shoulder, while he brushed the thumb of his other hand across the back of their joined hands. The fire had come to life, and between that and the kissing they'd been doing, it was awfully warm, and she was awfully tired…

__

"I'm not that boring am I?" Gilbert joked as Anne started and shifted after nearly drifting off.

__

"Boring, no. Focused on something that is of little interest to me in such a way that I focus on other things? On occasion. Safe and warm and the love and light of my life? Always." Anne turned her face up to kiss him on the cheek before resting her head back on his shoulder.

__

Gilbert kissed the top of her head. "I suppose I can accept that answer."

__

"Surely I'm not so interesting all of the time?" Anne asked.

__

"As ever, you said it best," Gilbert replied, squeezing her shoulders.

__

"…But my hair's always there when nothing else is," Anne teased.

__

Gilbert sighed, making a display of being just a little bashful. "I would like to reiterate that I cherish you for everything you are, and not just physically, either." He paused. "But you aren't wrong."

__

Anne looked up at him, her expression tender and utterly sincere. "You've made it clear there is more of me to be interested in than just my hair at the moment, Gilbert. Believe me when I say I know I'm cherished in every way. And I hope you feel the same."

__

Gilbert's initial reply was to lean in for another long, hard kiss. When he pulled away, he informed to a rather pleasantly hazy Anne that he was well aware of how she felt. Anne's response was to let out a contented sigh and lay her head back down on Gilbert's shoulder, shifting so that she was turned to face Gilbert, and holding their joined hands to her heart.

__

* * *

__

A short while later, there was a noise from outside that had sounded like footsteps on the porch, startling the pair out of a half-dozing state.

__

When it became clear that that wasn't the case, Gilbert checked his pocketwatch. He'd been gone long enough, they both knew. Bash wouldn't tell the Cuthberts, of course, but he would give Gilbert hell, and for as much as Mary tried not to judge, she had said more than once that someone had to draw the line on how long Gilbert, despite being an adult, was allowed to get up to no good. (Hazel's silent agreement with her daughter-in-law was equally sobering.)

__

Anne marshaled a brave but dismayed look, and Gilbert sighed. "I don't want to go, believe me, but we're pressing our luck as it is. If we wait any longer, you'll have to explain my footprints in the snow, and I'm not sure Marilla will believe that Mary's kitchen is any less well-stocked than her own and I just came over to borrow a cup of sugar."

__

The lingering kiss he gave her at the door was somehow both never enough and what would sustain her for the next two days, and the first thing Gilbert would do upon seeing Anne on Christmas (after taking her jacket and hanging it neatly) would be to pull her under a sprig of mistletoe and start to kiss her senseless. Anne's only complaint would be that Marilla would interrupt him in finishing the job by scolding them that others were present, at which point, Mary would lean over to Bash and stage whisper just who Marilla thought had hung the stuff to begin with. Marilla would tut, but she would be unable to keep a small smile entirely from her face.

__

During the exchange of gifts, Anne's own smile would be far too secretive upon reading the note Gilbert had left on the first page of the journal he'd bought Anne. Dellie, who was swiftly becoming quite the voracious reader, would ask what it said, and Anne would say that it was a very lovely note, and Mary would graciously cut in and remind her daughter that journals were private, and so Anne shouldn't read any of it aloud, and Anne would be fairly sure she wasn't imagining the slight emphasis on _shouldn't _, but the half hour of time in the barn the day after Christmas as promised in the note would go uninterrupted, and how much or little anyone with the family name of Lacroix knew about it would remain unclear.__

_____ _

Christmas would be a day of laughter and love and light with family and friends, the way the holiday—and really, all of winter, and all of life, Anne maintained— _should_ be spent. And it was, she knew, the way they'd spend it for the rest of their lives.

_____ _

**Author's Note:**

> …So yeah. This was just really an excuse to write a couple thousand words of them kissing and being generally adorable. That's it, really. Plot is for stories that need it, and this… does not.
> 
> Merry Christmas to my celebrating readers!
> 
> And to all of you, regardless of what you celebrate: I'm sure it's been different this year. Darker and harder, probably. If you can be light: be light. If you can find light: find light. If you need light: ask. We'll get through it.


End file.
